Group works to create a Latino cultural center in Syracuse

A Syracuse University project is reaching into the local Latino community with the goal of creating a Latino cultural center.

The La Casita Cultural Center Project, which formed about two years ago, aims to create a bridge between SU and the Latino community in and around Syracuse, said Genevieve Babecki, an SU engagement fellow working on La Casita. An engagement fellow is an SU senior selected by the university to receive a year of paid employment to work in the community on a project.

La Casita is headed by two SU professors, Silvio Torres-Saillant and Inmaculada Lara-Bonilla, and it is seeking nonprofit status, Babecki said.

“But we want to concentrate on the cultural and the artistic,” she said.

La Casita has concentrated on the Near West Side and has been working with Say Yes to Education at its summer camp at Seymour Elementary School, Babecki said. Seymour is the only local school with a dual Spanish-English language curriculum.

La Casita asked summer camp students to create logos for the organization and last week selected one that will be used as the basis of a La Casita logo. The winner was first-grader Mariangeliz Santiago.

Babecki said she’s been holding a weekly “reading circle” and book discussion at Seymour with parents and children. La Casita held book discussions at Mundy Branch Library at South Geddes Street, too.

The organization used focus groups to determine what the Latino community wanted it to get involved in, Babecki said. One of its projects is to document the Latino experience in Central New York by recording people’s stories.

“We are very much involved in the community. We are trying to break that ivory tower and continue with the chancellor’s policy of scholarship in action,” she said.

La Casita works with the Spanish Action League and will help it with its celebration of Latino Heritage Month, Babecki said.

The effort takes its name from a renaissance movement in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, she said.

“People would take over abandoned houses and turn them into cultural centers. That’s what we’re trying to do here,” Babecki said.

La Casita gets support from the Near West Side Initiative, a nonprofit organization working to revitalize the neighborhood. Syracuse University is a major player in the initiative.